


say it for always

by Naraht



Category: White Nights (1985)
Genre: Canon-Typical Racism, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 22:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19186615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: Thirty years later, when Raymond and Nikolai are together at a reception for the Kennedy Center Honors, they both reflect on the past and their friendship.





	say it for always

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Delphi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/gifts).



> Sadly I wasn't able to finish my assignment in time for Yuletide 2018 but I hope this goes some way towards making up for it.

Kolya liked to claim that he didn't believe he was nearly seventy, but if a lifetime's collection of a dancer's aches and pains wasn't enough to remind him, then being summoned to receive a Kennedy Center Honor certainly helped.

"Is it really 2015?" he said to Galya at the White House reception, shaking his head. "I still have trouble not writing _19_ in the year."

"So do I," she confessed, taking a sip of champagne. "Here it is, the future, and we haven't even succeeded in building communism yet."

They both burst out laughing at that.

"Galya," he said, "you look absolutely amazing."

"You flatterer."

"It's true!" he protested, holding his hands in the air.

Because it was true. As a young man he hadn't known that it was possible for a woman to become more beautiful by the year, but this was exactly what had happened to Galya. At twenty she had been pretty, at forty beautiful, and at seventy she was stunning.

It was difficult to believe that he had said goodbye to her thirty years ago in Leningrad, thinking he would never see her again. Only three years later the wall had come down and all their certainties had been overturned, but Galya had never left. The Soviet Union had disintegrated, and Leningrad had become Saint Petersburg, and the Kirov had become the Mariinsky, and still she had held fast. 

"And you really came all the way from Piter just for this?" he added. "To be at the Kennedy Center Honors?"

 _For me?_ he could have said, but didn't.

"Not just for this," she replied with a smile. "Afterwards I'm going to New York for some discussions with the NYCB about my Nureyev ballet."

"I told you..."

"Yes, yes, you told me, take it to the West to start with. But I want the premiere at the Mariinsky! It's not – they haven't said no. The board, the donors, just... It's complicated, that's all. I still think it will happen."

"I could have told you they weren't going to say yes to a ballet about a gay defector. A bisexual defector, even."

"They invited _you_ back, didn't they? Repeatedly."

"Maybe you've noticed that I never said yes. Besides, I don't dance my private life on stage."

 _That_ side of his life he hadn't explored for years after his return to America. It had been oddly easy to come out in a country that assumed every male ballet dancer was gay anyway; he'd found it more difficult getting people to accept that he hadn't sworn off women by embracing men. Yet it still felt strange discussing these things in Russian.

"Artistic freedom is a myth," said Galya firmly. "There are only different sorts of constraints in different places. Try taking a stand on global warming if you're sponsored by BP. Try going to the NYCB with a ballet about the glorious struggle of Al Qaeda."

"You're really comparing Rudy Nureyev to Osama bin Laden?" 

A few people turned to look at them. Perhaps he'd raised his voice slightly.

Galya shrugged. "It was an analogy. You know what I mean. Besides, I staged my tribute to Balanchine in the end, didn't I? And your tribute to Vysotsky too."

Yes, his tribute to Vysotsky. He'd made it back to America in 1986 still stunned from his experiences, as if that blow to the head had lingered. He'd gone his way; Raymond and Darya had gone theirs. After all the fuss in the media subsided he'd been left brooding alone. It was as if he had been Albrecht, freed from the clutches of the Wilis and blinking in the light of dawn. (Did that mean that Galya was Giselle? He suspected it did.)

He hated brooding – so he had danced instead. He'd taken what he remembered of what he had danced for Galya on the stage of the Kirov and turned Capricious Horses into a piece of choreography, a piece of contemporary ballet. It had been his first. Alongside his Escape with Raymond, it had arguably made his career – as a creator in his own right, not merely a rather talented dancer who was famous for defecting not once but twice from the same country. However beautiful _Giselle_ might have been, he never would have been satisfied with dancing it until he was fifty.

And none of it would have happened without that terrifying, terrible sojourn in the Soviet Union. None of it would have happened without Raymond, who during those long forced hours in the studio had taught him that improvisation was a thing of dignity in its own right. Without Raymond, who'd risked his life to help a man he hardly knew. What purer definition of heroism could there be?

Over the years he'd said this many times in interviews. He wondered whether it would be one of the clips they played at the awards ceremony. He wasn't looking forward to sitting through all the inevitable, overextended, fulsome praise. But he did hope they used that clip. He wanted Raymond to hear it again.

"Yes, my tribute to Vysotsky," he murmured, aware that Galya would expect some response.

She tilted her head and looked at him quizzically. "Have I won the argument, Kolya?"

"Yes," he said. "Absolutely."

"I'm sure you have other people to talk to," she said and patted him on the arm. "I'll come and find you later."

* * *

Raymond hadn't made a habit of accepting invitations to the White House. Truth be told, he'd never really had the opportunity – not until 2008. A black man in the White House! He still couldn't get over it, not even eight years later. A black man in the White House! A black man hosting the Kennedy Center Honors! A black President!

Darya smiled indulgently as their limousine pulled up outside its floodlit facade. "Yes, Raymond, I know."

Perhaps he'd said it out loud. Maybe more than once.

"Man, you just _know_ that Fox News is going to jump on that headline any second now. _Obama invites traitor to White House reception._ "

Nicky grinned at him. "You're just waiting for it, aren't you, Dad?"

No, he didn't like being called a traitor. After thirty years he still hadn't gotten used to it, that shock of remembering: _this is what you did._ But he had never minded being talked about.

That had been the biggest thing he'd had to get used to when he got home, alongside the VCRs and CD players and the collected works of Run DMC and Wynton Marsalis: the fact that people were actually willing to listen to him now.

He'd come home to a firestorm of media attention, met at the airport by a wall of cameras and a barrage of shouted questions. He'd held tightly to Darya's hand, expecting that any minute he would be plucked away from her again and sent God knew where to be interrogated by the CIA, maybe thrown into jail, who knew? He had told himself that as long as she and the baby were safe – he'd spent most of the flight with his hand resting on her belly, feeling the first feathery kicks – then nothing else mattered.

In fact they'd been driven from JFK to Brighton Beach – Brighton Beach, of all places! – where Darya had rented a tiny apartment and started patching together some under-the-table work as an interpreter. They'd been told that someone would be in touch in the coming weeks about debriefing him. And they'd been left alone – apart from the press, who called at every hour of the day and night.

Bargaining hard, Raymond had ended up with an exclusive on 60 Minutes with Ed Bradley. He'd insisted on Ed Bradley. Fifteen minutes at the top of the show. "Mr. Greenwood, what has it been like for you, coming back to America after a decade in the Soviet Union?"

No one had ever called him Mr. Greenwood before he left. No one had ever given a damn what he thought about anything. But now that he'd come back, people were listening. _A prophet is without honor in his own country_ – that was the only conclusion he could come to. 

None of it would have lasted without Kolya. 

The press firestorm burned itself out in less than a month. After that no one cared anymore. Apart from the occasional visits to a CIA office in Manhattan (at least he assumed it was a CIA office), where he'd willingly shared his extensive knowledge of the arts and culture scene in Siberia, he'd gone back to being just another black guy in America. Just another black guy trying to keep a roof over his head, promising himself that _he_ wasn't going to be a deadbeat father. He'd started thinking about auditions: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, summer theater in the sticks, he wasn't going to be picky... 

Auditions, yeah right. His Equity membership had lapsed. Somehow he didn't think anyone was going to be impressed by his cards from the USSR Union of Creative Workers and the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation.

So he'd done some busking, which was all right but it wasn't a steady job. Started thinking maybe he ought to paint houses or something. Go back to school, become a carpenter or an electrician, get back into theater through the trades. Hell, he would have become a garbage man if he'd had the right connections. Those guys had amazing benefits and pension plans.

"But you can't give up your art," Darya had protested.

"Darya, be real, I've got to make a _living_ now. I've got to _provide_. This is America. We're gonna have hospital bills soon, and that's just the beginning. College tuition? The government isn't going to give us shit."

He'd been lying awake at night wondering what on earth he was going to do. Wondering why he'd dragged Darya here, to a place where he couldn't take care of her and no one else gave a damn. In his darkest hours – dodging crack addicts on his way to the graffiti-covered Q train – he wondered whether he should've just done what Chaiko wanted. Political repression, sure, but couldn't he have lived with that? Right in his hands he'd held the chance to move back to Moscow. Darya had a degree from Moscow State University. What sort of chance was their kid really going to have here?

Coming up out of the subway into the light of Union Square, hearing hip-hop echoing from boomboxes, put those thoughts out of his head. New York City was his home. Whatever people might say about Pushkin's great-grandfather, he knew that no kid of his would be able to feel the same way about Russia.

A few days later, he'd had the call from Kolya. He'd nearly dropped the phone. 

"Raymond, I know that Darya is pregnant, but I want you to come on tour with me."

"You sure you got the right guy? Raymond Greenwood, dark skin, loves to tap? You know I can't dance on my toes. Never been _seen_ with feathers and a tutu."

"Enough with the ignorant darkie act," said Kolya, who ought to have known better after more than a decade in America. "You know ballet is more than that. You also know contemporary dance. We did something together in Leningrad."

"I _made_ you do something," said Raymond. "You sure as hell weren't going to do it on your own."

"You made me do something and I don't want to forget it. I could dance _Giselle_ until I'm fifty but I'm tired of it. Every time I dance those ballets, all the ballets that I learned there, I could be back on the stage of the Kirov. Back in Leningrad. I can't get it out of my mind. If I don't do something different, I'm going to go crazy."

"Something different..." said Raymond cautiously.

"Yes. A new touring company. Strictly contemporary, not just ballet. Pushing boundaries... _crossing_ boundaries. Breaking down barriers between us. Like we did."

It sounded legit. That was exactly the sort of bullshit you had to write to get a grant from the big trusts and foundations, the ones that never would open up their checkbooks for tap. But still... 

"You sure you don't just feel like you owe me for saving your ass?"

Even over the phone he could see Kolya's eloquent shrug. "Raymond, you know me. Would I be that generous? I am known to be a selfish asshole."

Raymond chuckled. Definitely sounded legit. "True."

"Well, then? Why haven't you said yes yet? Do you have another gig?"

"Got a callback on Thursday for a summer theater," said Raymond, whose pride hadn't let him give in that easily.

"Where?"

"In New Hampshire."

"Where's that?"

Now Raymond really couldn't help laughing.

"Yeah, OK, you got me. I'll do it."

Two weeks later, Kolya invited Raymond up to his summer house on Lake Winnipesaukee to start rehearsing. It was obvious he'd known exactly where New Hampshire was. 

That had been the start of it. Everything else had come in its wake. The Greenwood Dance Company, the Raymond and Darya Greenwood Foundation, the Broadway shows, the stint in Hollywood, the spot on Sesame Street... you really knew you'd arrived when you got that call from the Children's Television Workshop. He'd even presented Nikolai Rodchenko at the Apollo. 

"You think people in Harlem can't recognize _talent_ when they see it?" he'd said to Kolya, who'd seemed to think you needed a visa to go above 110th Street.

If only you could say the same thing about America. Raymond was a good tap dancer, damn good. He'd been damn good before they'd shipped him off to Vietnam. He deserved everything he had; he'd won it with his own sweat. Only one thing he'd lacked: connections. It had taken a Russian immigrant to give him those.

How odd to be able to say to someone: you changed my life. Even more difficult to know exactly how.

* * *

Walking into the White House reception, Raymond was still wondering where to start. That distracted him, threw him off his game. You had to have your wits about you at one of these shindigs. Before he knew it, his wife and his son had disappeared off somewhere and he'd been buttonholed by this white lady with a really chunky necklace from the Kennedy Center board who wanted to tell him all about multiculturalism. He didn't even have a glass of champagne yet. It took at least five minutes to weasel his way out of that one. 

At least ten minutes to escape from a Hollywood exec who wanted to dig up a film treatment that had been stuck in development hell for over a decade.

"This is a moment," he said. "The eighties are getting trendy again. Rick Astley, Soviet kitsch, Cold War nostalgia, all that stuff."

"Rick _Astley_?"

"OK, maybe not Rick Astley. But I'm telling you, there's a market. Play it right and we'll get a spin-off musical too. It could be the next Hamilton."

"Yeah, yeah," said Raymond, who had never really been sure that he wanted to see himself and Darya and Kolya on the big screen. 

Sure, if someone had asked him to play himself back in 1986, he would have jumped at the opportunity, but back then he'd needed the money. Now he'd been around the block with Hollywood enough times to know they'd manage to screw it up somehow. A buddy movie about a ballet dancer and a tap dancer joining forces for a Cold War escape escapade? Death-defying chase scenes intercut with dance sequences? Right. No one was going to buy that without a lot of explosions, a shoot-out and a secret agent stripper thrown into the mix. Probably they'd end up making Kolya into a ballerina.

"Look," he said, smiling and clasping the guy's shoulder firmly but insincerely, "give me a call, OK? We'll talk about it."

 _Not a chance,_ he told himself as he walked away.

All this time he still hadn't managed to catch sight of Kolya. It made him feel a little itchy, like he was still the guy's babysitter after all these years. Of course nothing could be more ridiculous than imagining you were actually going to get to have a meaningful talk with the guest of honor at an awards ceremony reception, but Raymond wanted to see him anyway. 

Sure, they met up a couple times a year – a meal when their paths crossed here, a week in Aspen there – but nothing could be the same as being on tour together. Nothing could be the same as spending a couple of weeks under guard in a studio under the eaves of the Kirov, doing nothing but bullshitting and showing off for each other. Funny to think, all those years later, _should have enjoyed myself more when I had the chance._

He found Galina Ivanova first. She'd always been perfectly civil but he still had the feeling that she didn't really like him, as if she somehow blamed him for seducing Kolya away from Russia even though it had been the other way around. They talked for a little while, polite chit-chat about the new wing of the Kirov – the Mariinsky now – and the latest study about the power of arts education. Finally he couldn't wait any longer. 

"You seen Kolya anywhere?"

A slight smile touched Galina's lips, as if he'd delivered her exactly the line she'd been expecting. She gestured with an arch of her neck, still every inch the ballerina.

"Over there. I'm certain he'll be happy to see you."

In the middle of a knot of onlookers, Raymond finally found Kolya. He was holding forth with champagne glass in hand, his other hand resting proprietorially on Nicky's shoulder.

"He is so handsome, this boy, such a good dancer, that I ask myself... perhaps he is actually mine?"

Raymond's son gave him a sheepish smile. It was an old joke of Kolya's and it had never been half as funny as he obviously thought it was.

"And I ask myself," said Raymond, pitching his voice to cut through the cocktail party chatter, "has that man gone _blind_ in his old age?"

Older every year, Kolya. A brow worn with lines and a mouth beginning to sag a little at the corners. He'd kept his hair, but it was shorter now, more severe. No trace of the boyishness that he'd retained – albeit in a somewhat battered form – when they'd first met. He'd been nearly forty; he was nearly seventy now. Yet when he spotted Raymond, his face lit up like a child's.

"So there you are! I wondered where they were hiding you."

"Hello old friend," said Raymond, unable to stop a matching smile from spreading across his face.

Everyone was watching them, everyone gathered round: the great reunion, the two defectors, tickets on sale now, full story at eleven. All their lives they had been performers, both of them, all their lives since children, but they weren't on stage now. This wasn't a performance. It wasn't for anybody else.

"Well, aren't you going to give me a hug?" said Kolya, perhaps sensing this moment of hesitation. "Congratulate me on my lifetime achievement? Remind me of all I've done?"

Raymond couldn't hold out any longer. He pulled Kolya into a bear hug, clasped him close, put his mouth up against his ear just like he'd done in that apartment in Leningrad when they were planning their escape. On stage at the Kennedy Center he'd say more, he'd say it more eloquently. He had a speech all written out, tucked carefully into an inside pocket of his jacket. But these were the words that mattered.

"You son of a bitch," said Raymond, tears stinging his eyes. "You know exactly what you did."


End file.
